


what about love

by orphan_account



Category: Coco (2017)
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Short One Shot, rated for a past mention of sex but nothing explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 10:52:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17786021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Ernesto and Victoria talk about past love interests, and just love itself.





	what about love

**Author's Note:**

> happy valentine's day!! here's some obligatory crack shipping.

Victoria sat on the rooftops, with her legs crossed and arms leaning against the roof's railing as she listened to Ernesto talk about his past love life.

 

"The first girl I had a crush on was when I was fourteen," Ernesto began. "I think her name was Adora? It's been such a long time, but I remember how she had such long, curly hair… like Rapunzel." He saw Victoria smile at this, and couldn't help but smile too. "One day, I asked her if she would like to go on a stroll with me near the plaza, and before she could even answer, her mother came in with a broom and tried beating me with it!" They both laughed at this as he made wild gestures. "I just gave up then and there and ran back home as fast as I could. Next week, I tried approaching her again, but she already had a novio."

 

Victoria frowned at this. "Oh… I'm sorry to hear that," she apologized, filled with sympathy for the mariachi.

 

"Eh, it's fine," Ernesto said, waving it off. "In three years, I found another girl, Alicia. She was prettier than Adora, and came from a wealthy family. We'd go to the plaza together, dance and I'd sing to her… and one night, we even had a little bit of fun."

 

Victoria was confused at first, until she realized what he meant. "You and her… at _seventeen_?"

 

"It was 1911," Ernesto said simply. "People were getting married and dying in their early twenties, and we were two kids filled with lust. Besides, your abuelo was eighteen and your abuela was nineteen when they married and had Coco." He shrugged, then noticed that the usually stoic woman now seemed to be invested in the stories he was telling. "But tell me, Victoria, have you ever had any past relationships or infatuations of any sort?"

 

She froze at the question. If she had any skin on her, she would've gone pale at the very thought. No, she hadn't had any romantic relationships or even crushes in her life for many reasons – one being that she just didn't have any time to pursue someone else as she was busy with work, family and many other things.

 

Another reason was that none of the men around her age at the time were either too snobbish, too foolish or too arrogant to even consider the granddaughter of a shoemaker to be their partner, especially when said shoemaker was a single mother whose husband had disappeared.

 

A woman who was well-educated, introverted, unafraid to be as blunt and honest as possible from a family of shoemakers whose number one rule had been _no music?_ Not exactly wife material, especially to young bachelors in the 1960s. A good wife was a woman similar to a porcelain doll: small, submissive, fragile, weak and quiet. A good wife had smooth skin, rosy cheeks and a small button nose. A good wife was a beautiful, obedient woman, all that Victoria was not.

 

"No," Victoria said quietly, her shoulders falling as she looked down with a frown. "No one wanted me."

 

Ernesto didn't know why, but somehow, her words struck his heart in  a painful way. It was like he was feeling a bit of her misery. Now, it was his turn to say: "Oh, _siento escuchar eso_ …"

 

After a few minutes of silence, he quickly tried changing the subject, moving onto various other topics in an attempt to forget their little conversation about love. As the mariachi went on, Victoria thought long and hard about what he had asked her.

 

It was true that in life, she never had any romantic relationships or infatuations. There was no man her age who would even think about asking the eldest granddaughter of Imelda Rivera to be their wife. No one wanted a woman of her sort. But maybe, she thought as she looked at Ernesto, love wasn't just something that could be had in life only… her grandparents loved each other fiercely even in death, and so did her parents. If their love lived on in death, then who was to say she couldn't find love now?

 

In a way, Ernesto helped her realize something: love was something that happened naturally by finding its way into people's lives, or even afterlives in this case.

**Author's Note:**

> hope that was good enough for a valentine's day oneshot. i might write another for tomorrow, but like with one of them genderbent maybe. we'll see...


End file.
